The new entry into downtown St. Louis, through the newly configured Tucker Boulevard from the Stan Musial Veterans’ Bridge, could be a great opportunity to spread urban development northward from downtown. St. Louis is hamstrung by having interstates, dead zones and housing projects ringing its downtown like a noose, and unlike other major cities where you can walk from stable residential neighborhoods straight into downtown, such a “luxury” is currently impossible in St. Louis.
On the vacant land near the bridge, autocentric, and just frankly ugly, development is going up. Take this strip mall for example; how does this fit in with the rejuvenation of the Northside? And why does it even have a fence around it???
Oops, I guess they’re not going to get done with this piece of crap. Seriously, this is the way they build machine sheds out in the country. Where are we?
I relate such things to the thousands of small towns outside major metros whose alder people now get overly excited when a resident wants to use the vacant lot next to their home for used car sales. It’s like that only bigger, more visible and affects the morale of more people. It’s not like that in that it impedes the flow of traffic and development. However, it’s all relative in the end. No one doing anything worth doing wants anything to do with such a mess. It just lends city officials the image of forever doing “something” without ever really getting anything done.